1. Filed of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for packet transmission control and packet billing data generation on wired/wireless network, especially, the apparatus can control the packet transmission and measure the amount of packet.
2. Description of the Related Technology
The development of science and technology and the improvement of economy make it possible to develop communication devices and distribute these kinds of devices widely. Also, the distribution of communication devices enables users on remote sites to communicate data via wired/wireless network.
FIG. 1A is a schematic diagram showing the conventional billing method in wired Internet environment.
Referring to FIG. 1A, user terminal 110 and more than one web server 120a, 120b, 120c, . . . 120n (hereinafter, these are called collectively as “120”) are connected to each other via network.
User terminal 110 can be any device such as mobile terminal, PDA(Personal Digital Assistant), notebook computer, which can access to web server 120.
As shown in FIG. 1A, if an user wants to use any chargeable contents provided from the web sever 120 in the wired Internet environment, the user has to access to the web server 120.
And then, if the user used chargeable contents of the web server 120, the web server 120 records and manages the chargeable content use data of the user to the user access log.
When the communication service provider(namely, wired Internet access service provider) starts a billing process at the predetermined time, the access log collector 130 collects the user access log from more than one web server 120 on the network.
In this case, if the format of user access log in one web server is different from that of another web server, these formats are converted into a standard format and then the billing for used chargeable contents is performed.
But, since the access log collector has to be connected to many web servers if many web servers 120 exist on the network and each access method can be different from each other, it is a problem that the conventional billing method has to equip various interfaces for each web server 120.
FIG. 1B is a schematic diagram showing the conventional billing method in wireless Internet environment.
Referring to FIG. 1B, a user terminal capable for using the wireless Internet service 110 and more than one web servers 120 are connected to each other via network.
If a user wants to use wireless Internet service, the user terminal 110 has to access to a packet PCX 150 through a wireless equipment 140. The packet PCX 150, which converts data packet in wireless network into Internet packet in wired Internet, is one chosen from GGSN(Gateway GPRS Support Node) and SGSN(Serving GSM Support Node) in WCDMA and AP(Access Point) in wireless LAN.
Also, when the packet PCX 150 converts data packet in wireless network into Internet packet in wired Internet to make the user terminal to access to the web server 120, the amount of packet usage of each user is sent periodically to the billing log collector(i.e., AAA) 160.
When billing the wireless data communication, the communication service provider performs the billing process by use of the amount of packet usage of each user, collected by the billing log collector 160. However, this billing system is only suitable for simple billing scheme proportional to packet usage, not for various billing schemes for each service.
Sometimes the user has to pay for the data communication(i.e., receiving chargeable data) through wired/wireless network and the service provider has to collect and manage data on the usage amount of each user in order to charge for the data communication. Since some malicious users conduct hacking or DoS(Denial of Service) attacks to disrupt networked communication services, an access to a web server and the like, the protection scheme(i.e., packet service control) against these kinds of attacks is being required.
Most of existing packet service control methods, which were applied to the conventional network, use a firewall that compares a source IP address and a destination IP address in order to determine the transmission of packet. And as a method of measuring the amount of user data packet, used content record(that is, user access log) stored in the web server where the user accessed is applied to wired Internet to generate billing data, and total amount of packets is applied to wireless Internet.
However, the conventional packet service control method compares only source IP address and destination IP address in the firewall to determine the transmission of packet so that the conventional method cannot provide a proper solution against the hacking attacks like DOS because it is impossible to compare only by IP addresses. Further, the conventional method cannot provide any solution even when the method has to determine the packet transmission based on the application protocol, the highest level of TCP/IP protocol.
And, in the conventional billing data generating(that is, usage amount measuring) method, the web server records the usage log of each user and then sends the usage log to an external billing server that uses the usage log as basic billing data. But since the external billing server has to cooperatively process with a new web server whenever a new web server comes, there is a problem to perform the billing process quickly and flexibly.
Also, in the case of the conventional billing data generating method in the wireless Internet, the external billing server performs the billing process on receiving from PCX the total amount of packets that the user used after accessing to the network. But since data provided to the billing server is limited to the total amount of packets in this kind of method, it is impossible to apply different fee schedules for different types of services.
Also, although the conventional packet service control function and billing data generating function are essential to the communication service provider, they have to buy independent devices because there is no device providing the above-mentioned functions. It causes the double expenses and the complicated management.